First Fatal Tesla Autopilot Crash May Have Happened In January

The crash that you see in the vvideo may have been the very first fatal crash that involved Tesla's autopilot system. According to China's CCTV news agency 23-year-old Gao Yaning died in January after crashing into the back of a road sweeping vehicle while driving his Tesla on a highway in the northeastern province of Hebei.

Gao's family have filed a case against Tesla and the Beijing dealership that sold Gao the car. However, Tesla claims that it has no way of knowing if the semi-autonomous Autopilot system was engaged as the the damage caused by the crash the car was physically incapable of transmitting log data to Tesla's servers.

According to Reuters, Tesla in its statement claimed that it was tried repeatedly to work with the victim's family to determine the cause of the crash, but the family "has not provided us with any additional information that would allow us to do so."